Avoiding Plagiarism and Citing Responsibly

Whether you’re writing a nonfiction book, crafting a blog post, or submitting a paper for school, there’s one rule you should always keep front of mind: give credit where credit is due.

Plagiarism isn’t just an academic offense. It’s a breach of trust between a writer and their reader, and it can carry serious consequences: from damaged reputations to legal trouble.

The good news? Avoiding plagiarism is simple once you understand what requires citation and how to credit your sources properly.

I won’t address how to format your sources because that depends on which style you’re using, but let’s talk when you need to cite, different citation methods, and how AI fits into all this.

Plagiarism is using someone else’s words, ideas, or work without proper acknowledgment. It can be intentional—like copying a paragraph from a website into your book without citation—or unintentional, like paraphrasing a source too closely or forgetting to include a citation.

Plagiarism includes:

• Copying exact wording from a source without quotation marks or citation
• Paraphrasing a source’s idea or structure without credit
• Presenting another person’s original insight as your own
• Using media (like photos, charts, or AI-generated graphics) without proper attribution

Even if your intent isn’t malicious, failure to cite your sources properly is still plagiarism. Thankfully, a few simple habits can help you avoid it entirely.

If you quote someone word for word, you must use quotation marks (or block formatting) and include a citation. This is true whether it’s a sentence from a famous speech or a line from a blog post.

If it’s someone else’s words, you need to give them credit.

Even when you put something into your own words, if you learned it from a source, you need to cite it.

Example paraphrased idea

Original quote: “People tend to retain more when they read physical books than e-books.”

Paraphrase: Studies suggest people may retain more information from physical books than from digital formats.

That paraphrase will still need a citation.

Paraphrasing without citing still counts as plagiarism. Rewriting doesn’t erase the idea’s origin.

Numbers almost always require citation unless you got the data yourself through your own survey and research.

According to Pew Research, 81% of Americans own a smartphone.

This requires a citation. Yes, you identified Pew Research in the text, but that is only part of the citation. More on this in the “Types of Citations” section.

Visuals sometimes need attribution too, so always check the licensing.

If the image or graphic is in the public domain or released under a Creative Commons Zero (COO) license, you typically don’t need to cite it.

As for other Creative Commons license, check the details as some require credit and others don’t.

If you pay for an image, then you definitely need to give it credit. If it is free, it may come with restrictions on commercial use. It may be free to use, for example, on your website, but require purchasing or appropriate credit if used in a published book.

With that said, it never hurts to give the creator credit. If I were to use any image, table, or chart in a published work, regardless of licensing, I would at least credit the creator. I may not need a full citation, but I like to acknowledge the creator.

The rise of generative AI tools has made content creation faster, but it’s also introduced new ethical and legal gray areas. Using AI writing without credit is technically not plagiarism in the traditional sense; however, if you’re its output in a published work, passing it off as your own can be ethically questionable.

Whether AI use is considered okay or not depends on how you use it and the context.

• Academic writing: Many institutions treat unacknowledged AI use as a form of plagiarism. Check your school’s policy. You definitely can’t use AI to write your entire paper. Sorry, not sorry, students!
• Blogs: If you’re using AI to brainstorm or refine your ideas, you don’t need to disclose. If AI writes the initial draft and you edit it and add in your voice and expand on areas, some readers feel you should disclose that it was AI assisted; others, don’t. So know your audience and move forward with integrity. If you copy it verbatim, you need to make sure the output wasn’t from another source or that is plagiarism in the strictest sense.
• Books: If you’re using AI to brainstorm or refine your ideas, you don’t need to disclose. If AI writes parts of the book, disclose that you used AI to assist you in writing the book in the front matter. Do not have AI write an entire book and pass it off as your own.
• Freelance writing or content work: Some clients want transparency about AI usage, while others prohibit it entirely. Always clarify.
• Social media posts: You don’t need to disclose your use here. The level you use AI is up to you and what you feel is still true to your authenticity and integrity. However, make sure the output doesn’t closely match an existing work.

If your content is heavily AI-assisted or AI-written, best practice is to disclose it, especially in nonfiction, journalism, or educational settings. Readers appreciate honesty.

AI scenarios

Scenario 1: You’re struggling to figure out how to explain a high-level concept. So you ask AI if your content in a given section is clear enough that a 12-year-old with no background would understand it. That isn’t plagiarism and doesn’t need to be acknowledged. It is helping you determine if it is clear, and it is giving you ideas for if it isn’t, but the words are still your own.

Scenario 2: You wrote a blog, and you asked AI to give you to write an example of the concept you’re teaching. Then you copy and paste that example into your blog (I have done this). You can decide to give credit if your audience would care (I credit it), and you have to give credit if you discover the output closely mimics something that is already published.

Scenario 3: You use AI to help you with copyediting your book. I don’t feel you need to disclose this. If it helped you put in a comma or two, that’s not a big deal.

Scenario 4: You asked AI to rewrite an entire scene or section or two or three. Disclose it at the beginning of your book that you used AI to help you write parts of the book.

Bottom line: AI doesn’t technically plagiarize in the traditional sense, but it can output content that’s too similar to copyrighted material. For example, if you ask an AI to write “in the style of Malcolm Gladwell,” you might accidentally echo his sentence structure or concepts too closely. Always review, fact-check, and revise AI-generated content to make it your own.

You can cite sources in several ways, and the best method often depends on your writing context.

This is the most common method in academic and journalistic writing.

A brief parenthetical reference appears right in the sentence or paragraph with the full citation information given in a words cited/bibliography at the end.

In-text: “Climate change has accelerated in recent decades (NASA).”

Bibliography entry: NASA. Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. Accessed January 10, 2025. https://climate.nasa.gov/.

In-text citations are concise, but can interrupt the flow in creative or narrative nonfiction. I do not suggest them for non-academic base books. The casual reader may be put off by the “too academic” look.

A small superscript number appears after the cited content, with the full citation at the bottom of the page.

“He coined the term ‘emotional labor’ to describe workplace empathy.¹”

Full citation at bottom of page: 1 Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 7.

Footnotes are great for books because they let you give credit without breaking the narrative flow. They also allow space for commentary or extra info.

These work like footnotes, but all notes appear at the end of a chapter or book rather than at the bottom of the page. This keeps the page clean but makes referencing slower for the reader.

This also works great for books. It just depends on whether you want to avoid page clutter or not.

You don’t need to memorize citation formats and how you format it depends on what style guide you use.

For example, citing Arlie’s book looks a bit different with each format

CMOS footnote: Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 7.
APA: Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
MLA: Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press, 1983.

So for purposes of this blog, don’t worry about the format. However, you do need to collect the right information to create a citation regardless of format. In general, a full citation includes:

• Author(s) name
• Title of the work (book, article, blog post, video, etc.)
• Date of publication
• Publisher or website name
• URL (for online sources)
• Page number (for print sources, if quoting)

Some citation styles may ask for additional info like access dates or DOIs. Just keep in mind: the more details you gather up front, the easier citation will be later.

Citing isn’t just about following rules—it’s about showing integrity. When you cite, you’re telling your reader, I’ve done my research. You’re elevating others’ ideas while contributing your own. And you’re building a relationship with your audience based on honesty.

Whether you’re drafting a novel, writing a business book, or posting a thought-provoking blog, keep a simple principle in mind: If it didn’t come from you, cite it.

Your future self (and your editor) will thank you.

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I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?
• Do you feel AI use in a blog should be disclosed?
• What type of citation do you prefer—in-text, footnote, endnote—and why?
• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?